Press Room

Pinch A Palooza Festival 2019 - April 7 in Bucktown

New Orleans’ favorite family seafood restaurant will be firing up the boil pots for its 10th-annual neighborhood crawfish festival, Pinch A Palooza Festival & Crawfish Eating Contest, noon to 7 p.m., Sun., April 7 in Bucktown. Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant in Bucktown—the original location of the well-known seafood restaurant with three locations in and around New Orleans—will continue the tradition of celebrating the Bucktown community and delicious local crawfish with a day of live music and entertainment, a Crawfish Eating Contest, and plenty of crawfish specialties and libations. Actor and comedian Johnny Rock will emcee Pinch A Palooza.

A $1 donation to The Good Shepherd School will get you in the gates for the day’s festivities. Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant & Seafood Market is located at 1713 Lake Ave. at Old Hammond Highway in Metairie.

The Pinch A Palooza lineup includes local classic rock band Roux the Day, Westwego-based Swamp Pop band Ryan Foret & Foret Tradition, legendary entertainers Vince Vance & The Valiants, and “New Orleans’s hardest working party band,” The Top Cats.

For the past nine years, neighbors and festival lovers alike have joined in Deanie’s annual crawfish festival, where they can cheer on the crawfish eating contestants, dance to great local music and enjoy fun activities like crawfish races, Crawfish Tic Tac Toe and inflatables and bounce houses for the kids.

Delicious Crawfish Seasoned Deanie’s-Style

It should go without saying that Pinch A Palooza will have plenty of hot boiled Louisiana Crawfish! Deanie’s was one of the first places in New Orleans to sell boiled seafood, and the restaurant continues its tradition of locally sourced seafood prepared with Deanie’s signature seasoning mix, which has earned it “Best Place for Boiled Crawfish” honors for several years.

If boiled crawfish served with corn and potatoes is not enough to fill your appetite, Pinch A Palooza also will feature great Deanie’s crawfish specialties such as fried crawfish tails, crawfish nachos, crawfish balls and crawfish étouffée, plus a selection of non-seafood items, draft beer and specialty cocktails.

Deanie’s Bucktown Philanthropic Trust

Pinch A Palooza is not only a crawfish celebration but a philanthropic event and a way for Deanie’s to support local charitable organizations. Deanie’s formed the Bucktown Philanthropic Trust with a focus on supporting children’s causes and celebrating Bucktown's heritage and culture. Pinch A Palooza is a major initiative of the Trust, which donates a portion of the proceeds from the festival as well as the restaurants’ annual holiday kids program to local nonprofits.

This year’s Pinch A Palooza beneficiary, The Good Shepherd School, is a faith-based elementary school in Gentilly that serves low-income families in New Orleans.

Pinch A Palooza Crawfish Eating Contest

The Pinch A Palooza Crawfish Eating Contest will return for those true crawfish lovers. Each contestant receives a Pinch A Palooza T-shirt, plus all the crawfish they can eat during one of two heats. Those who finish at the top earn great prizes, including a grand prize of a crawfish boil for 20 people provided by Deanie’s Seafood.

Adults 18 and up can enter online to compete in the contest and try to make it through one of the two heats to the final round. Registration is $20. Contest registration and more information is available at the event website, Pinchapalooza.com.

Pinch A Palooza Festival Celebrating 10 Years

Deanie’s Seafood first introduced Pinch A Palooza in 2010 to celebrate Louisiana crawfish and the music and culture of Bucktown. The crawfish festival serves up several thousand pounds of boiled Louisiana crawfish. In 2014, Deanie’s helped to get April proclaimed “Louisiana Crawfish Awareness Month” in recognition of crawfish as an important part of Louisiana’s history, culture and economy.

About Deanie’s Seafood

Deanie’s Seafood Restaurants and Market have been known for serving hearty portions of the best boiled, broiled and fried seafood in New Orleans prepared in our signature Creole seasonings for more than 50 years. Deanie's Seafood was the first restaurant and seafood market in the Greater New Orleans region to have earned Louisiana Wild Seafood Certification from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in 2014.

Family-owned and -operated, Deanie’s Seafood operates three successful restaurants, including its original restaurant and seafood market in Bucktown, 1713 Lake Ave., Deanie’s in the French Quarter, 841 Iberville St., and its newest location, Deanie’s Sea Food Kitchen, 2200 Magazine Street in the Garden District.

Deanie’s offers off-site catering serving the authentic flavor of New Orleans and ships fresh Louisiana seafood including Louisiana oysters, shrimp, crawfish and blue crab, and delicious prepared items such as seafood gumbo, crawfish étouffée and stuffed crab and crawfish through its online retail site Shopdeanies.com. Our restaurants and seafood market are open seven days per week.